Daughter's April Fools' joke no laughing matter to police in Londonderry

By APRIL GUILMETUnion Leader Correspondent

LONDONDERRY — Police aren’t laughing at an April Fools’ Day prank they say a Londonderry woman played on her elderly father.

Shortly after 1 p.m. on April 1, police received a phone call from a distraught local man who told them his daughter had just called him from inside the Garden Lane Market Basket store and told him that “a man with a gun had just come in.”

.“He was in an absolute panic,” Detective Christopher Olson said Thursday. “He was so shaken up he could hardly speak.”

Dispatchers immediately sent an entire shift of police officers to the store, but upon their arrival, it became clear that something was amiss...“The managers told us they had no idea what we were talking about,” Olson said.

Management later told police that no “suspicious men” had entered the store, to their knowledge.

In the meantime, the caller, who police did not identify, contacted police to tell them his daughter “had played an April Fools’ Day joke on him.”..“We’re not even sure if she went to Market Basket that day,” Olson said of the woman, who is in her early 40s. He said police are taking this April Fools’ Day prank very seriously, but efforts to contact the woman have been unsuccessful so far...“We definitely want to talk to this woman,” Olson said. “She may be facing some charges once we determine what actually happened here.”

Police said they aren’t releasing the alleged prankster’s name until they hear her side of the story...aguilmet@newstote.com ..